The three summits of this continent, the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate islands, Viti (Fiji), Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna (? Foutouha), Ouvea (? Oueeha), the Marquesas, Tahiti, Poumoutou (? Pomatou), the Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from seven or eight hundred to one thousand leagues.
All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central groups could never have communicated in view of their actual geographical position, and with the insufficient means they had at hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances in a pirogue ... without a compass, and travel months without provisions.
On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of Viti, of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti, etc., had never known each other, had never heard of each other, before the arrival of the Europeans. And yet each of these people maintained that their island had at one time formed part of an immense stretch of land which extended towards the West on the side of Asia. And all, brought together, were found to speak the same language, to have the same usages, the same customs, the same religious belief. And all to the question, “Where is the cradle of your race?” for sole response, extended their hand toward the setting sun.[517]
Geographically, this description clashes slightly with the facts in the Secret Records; but it shows the existence of such traditions, and this is all one cares for. For, as there is no smoke without fire, so a tradition must be based on some approximate truth.
In its proper place we will show Modern Science fully corroborating the above and other traditions of the Secret Doctrine with regard to the two lost Continents. The Easter Island relics, for instance, are the most astounding and eloquent memorials of the primeval giants. They are as grand as they are mysterious; and one has but to examine the heads of the colossal statues, that have remained unbroken, to recognize at a glance the features of the type and character attributed to the Fourth Race giants. They seem of one cast though different in features—of a distinctly sensual type, such as the Atlanteans (the Daityas and “Atalantians”) are said to have had in the Esoteric Hindû books. Compare these with the faces of some other colossal [pg 235] statues in Central Asia—those near Bamian, for instance—the portrait-statues, tradition tells us, of Buddhas belonging to previous Manvantaras; of those Buddhas and heroes who are mentioned in the Buddhist and Hindû works, as men of fabulous size,[518] the good and holy brothers of their wicked coüterine brothers generally, just as Râvana, the giant king of Lankâ, was the brother of Kumbhakarna; all descendants of the Gods through the Rishis, and thus, like “Titan and his enormous brood,” all “Heaven's first-born.” These “Buddhas,” though often spoilt by the symbolical representation of great pendent ears, show a suggestive difference, perceived at a glance, in the expression of their faces from that of the Easter Island statues. They may be of one race—but the former are “Sons of Gods”; the latter the brood of mighty sorcerers. All these are reïncarnations however, and, apart from unavoidable exaggerations in popular fancy and tradition, they are historical characters.[519] When did they live? How long ago lived the two Races, the Third and Fourth; and how long after did the various tribes of the Fifth begin their strife, the wars between Good and Evil? We are assured by the Orientalists that chronology is both hopelessly mixed and absurdly exaggerated in the Purânas and other Hindû Scriptures. We feel quite prepared to agree with the accusation. But, if Âryan writers have occasionally allowed their chronological pendulum to swing too far one way, beyond the legitimate limit of fact; nevertheless, when the distance of that deviation is compared with the distance of the Orientalists' deviation in the opposite direction, moderation will be found on the Brâhmanical side. It is the Pandit who will, in the long run, be found more truthful and nearer to fact than the Sanskritist. The Sanskritist's curtailing—even when proved to have been resorted to in order to fit a personal hobby—is regarded by Western public opinion as “a cautious acceptance of facts,” whereas the Pandit is brutally treated in print as a “liar.” But, surely, this is no reason why everyone should be compelled to see this in the same light! An impartial observer may judge it otherwise. He may either proclaim both unscrupulous historians, or justify both, each on his respective ground, and say: Hindû Âryans wrote for their Initiates, who read truth between the lines; not for the masses. If they did mix up events and [pg 236] confuse Ages intentionally, it was not with the view of deceiving any one, but in order to preserve their knowledge from the prying eye of the foreigner. But, to him who can count the generations from the Manus, and the series of incarnations specified in the cases of some heroes,[520] in the Purânas, the meaning and chronological order are very clear. As for the Western Orientalist, he must be excused, on account of his undeniable ignorance of the methods used by archaic Esotericism.
But such existing prejudices will have to give way and disappear very soon before the light of new discoveries. Already Dr. Weber's and Prof. Max Müller's favourite theories—namely, that writing was not known in India, even in the days of Pânini (!); that the Hindûs had all their arts and sciences—even to the Zodiac and their architecture (Fergusson)—from the Macedonian Greeks; these and other such cock-and-bull hypotheses, are threatened with ruin. It is the ghost of old Chaldæa that comes to the rescue of truth. In his third Hibbert Lecture (1887) Professor Sayce of Oxford, speaking of newly-discovered Assyrian and Babylonian cylinders, refers at length to Ea, the God of Wisdom, now identified with the Oannes of Berosus, the half-man, half-fish, who taught the Babylonians culture and the art of writing. This Ea, to whom, thanks only to the Biblical Deluge, an antiquity of hardly 1,500 b.c. had been hitherto allowed, is now spoken of in the following terms, to summarize from the Professor:
The city of Ea was Eridu, which stood 6,000 years ago on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The name means “the good city,” a particularly holy spot, since it was the centre from which the earliest Chaldæan civilization made its way to the north. As the culture-god was represented as coming from the sea, it was possible that the culture of which Eridu was the seat was of foreign importation. We now know that there was intercourse at a very early period between Chaldæa and the Sinaitic peninsula, as well as with India. The statues discovered by the French at Tel-loh (dating from at latest b.c. 4,000) were made of the extremely hard stone known as diorite, and the inscriptions on them stated the diorite to have been brought from Magan—i.e., the Sinaitic peninsula, which was then ruled by the Pharaohs. The statues are known to resemble in general style the diorite statue, Kephren, the builder of the second Pyramid, while, according to Mr. Petrie, the unit of measurement marked on the plan of the city, which one of the Tel-loh figures holds on his lap, is the same as that employed by the Pyramid builders. [pg 237]Teak wood has been found at Mugheir, or Ur of the Chaldees, although that wood is an Indian special product; add to this that an ancient Babylonian list of clothing mentions sindhu or “muslin,” explained as “vegetable cloth.”[521]
Muslin, best known now as Dacca muslin, known in Chaldæa as Hindu (Sindhu), and teak wood used 4,000 years b.c., and yet the Hindûs, to whom Chaldæa owes its civilization, as has been well proven by Colonel Vans Kennedy, were ignorant of the art of writing before the Greeks taught them their alphabet—if, at least, we have to believe Orientalists!